Today hundreds of millions of Internet users are using thousands of social web sites to stay connected with their friends, discover new friends and acquaintances, and to share user-created content (UCC). UCC is any digital material developed and authored by an individual, located anywhere and in any form. That individual owns the rights to the created UCC, examples of which include, but are not limited to, photos, videos, documents, sound/audio, social bookmarks, and blogs. Beyond the individual, social web sites have become a powerful additional means that organizations, business and non-profit, use to market their products and services and manage customer relationships. Organizations post their UCC, such as product release announcements, photos, and videos, to such sites; they also monitor and respond to both positive and negative comments by members about their products and services. Member comments and the organization responses are both UCC as well. Since social web sites provide a rich set of features for the online networking and sharing of UCC, businesses are now using social web sites, hosted either externally or internally, to extend a layer of social capabilities across the business to engage employees, customers, and partners at all levels. Such use is commonly referred to a business, or enterprise, social web.
Social web sites, internal or external, offer a form of security, usually in the guise of “privacy controls”, to allow a user (individual or organizational) to control the visibility and sharing of his UCC. The user, whose UCC has been posted to or authored at the web site, is forced to rely on whatever security, assuming there even is security, that is offered by each particular web site. The type and level of security varies from web site to web site, and the user has no choice in the type of security that is provided and that is offered by the hosting social web site. And even if the user finds the security offered by a particular web site satisfactory, only that web site is obligated to abide by its security policy and controls; its security can not extend beyond the web site, nor can it be allianced with the security policy and controls of another to extend the user's ability to control the distribution of his/his/their UCC beyond the web site. If a person were to download the user's UCC from the web site, that person would not be required to abide by any particular security policy.